Music: Bedřich Smetana (String Quartet From My Life)
Choreography: Pavel Šmok
Staging: Kateřina Dedková – Franková
Costume design: Jan Dušek
Light design: Jakub Sloup
Premiere: 16. 11. 1983
Renewed premiere: 5. 10. 2014 The Estates Theatre in Prague
Performing: 6 dancers
Duration: 28 minutes
The quartet From My Life belongs amongst leading works from worldwide chamber music productions. Its kontent is derived from its title: i tis a noviny, ihned confession of the composer, musing over his current life with its pleasures and disappointments. It is also a confession of belief in his own noble mission and bitter resignation from the futile struggle with a malign illness (the quartet came about two years after Smetana turned deef). The tragic pathos of the unequal struggle of an artist with an incurable illness became the central theme of Šmok´s choreography.
The performance was created as a part of celebration of the Year of Czech Music 2014.